Supportive Care for Patients with Systemic Light Chain Amyloidosis

Diagnostic and Treatment Strategies for AL Amyloidosis in an Era of Therapeutic Innovation

Despite significant progress and improving outcomes in the management of plasma cell disorders, AL amyloidosis remains diagnostically and therapeutically challenging for clinicians across practice settings. There is, however, a reason for optimism with the advent of new combination therapy approaches and novel targets offering the promise of improvement in end organ function, survival, and quality of life. This review offers a clinically applicable overview of an approach to diagnosis, risk stratification, and clinical management of AL amyloidosis in an era of rapid therapeutic innovation.

AL Amyloidosis for Cardiologists: Awareness, Diagnosis, and Future Prospects: JACC: CardioOncology State-of-the-Art Review

Amyloid light chain (AL) amyloidosis is a rare, debilitating, often fatal disease. Symptoms of cardiomyopathy are common presenting features, and patients often are referred to cardiologists. Cardiac amyloid infiltration is the leading predictor of death. However, the variable presentation and perceived rarity of the disease frequently lead to delay in suspecting amyloidosis as a cause of heart failure, leading to misdiagnoses and a marked delay in diagnosis, with devastating consequences for the patient. A median time from symptom onset to correct diagnosis of about 2 years is often too long when median survival from diagnosis for patients with AL amyloidosis and cardiomyopathy is 4 months to 2 years. The authors highlight the challenges to diagnosis, identify gaps in the current knowledge, and summarize novel treatments on the horizon to raise awareness about the critical need for early recognition of symptoms and diagnosis of AL amyloidosis aimed at accelerating treatment and improving outcomes for patients.

Multidisciplinary supportive care in systemic light chain amyloidosis

The immunoglobulin light-chain amyloidosis is a multisystemic disease which manifests by damage to the vital organs by light chain-derived amyloid fibril. Traditionally, the treatment has been directed to the underlying plasma cell clone with or without high dose chemotherapy followed by autologous stem cell transplantation using melphalan based conditioning. Now with the approval of highly tolerable anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody daratumumab based anti-plasma cell therapy in 2021, high rates of hematologic complete responses are possible even in patients who are otherwise deemed not a candidate for autologous stem cell transplantation. However, despite the progress, there remains a limitation in the strategies to improve symptoms particularly in patients with advanced cardiac involvement, those with nephrotic syndrome and autonomic dysfunction due to underlying systemic AL amyloidosis. The symptoms can be an ordeal for the patients and their caregivers and effective strategies are urgently needed to address them. The supportive care is aimed to counteract the symptoms of the disease and the effects of the treatment on involved organs’ function and preserve patients’ quality of life. Here we discuss multidisciplinary approach in a system-based fashion to address the symptom management in this dreadful disease. In addition to achieving excellent anti-plasma cell disease control, using treatment directed to remove amyloid from the vital organs can theoretically hasten recovery of the involved organs thereby improving symptoms at a faster pace. Ongoing phase III clinical trials of CAEL-101 and Birtamimab will address this question.